Site skin in progress: Metro

Interests:I'm just a quiet simple person with a very quiet simple life living one day at a time..

European Union

Posted 25 February 2013 - 09:42 PM

Hello,

A new visual theme for the site is under testing. This theme is inspired on the style brought forward with the new Windows 8 user interface.

If you don't see it, go to the end each page and open up the "change theme" box. Select the theme "Metro".

So far I'm enjoying the change in colors brought by the new theme, I hope you also like them.

The theme is still being adjusted to our site, you might stumble on some of these changes and defects on the layout until we get them ironed out. Otherwise, don't worry and just keep on using any of other available themes on the site.

If you have feedback of things you'd like to see changed on the theme (colors, font size, ...) then please let me know. Can't promise that everything can be changed and corrected, but I can try to make changes within my reach.

Interests:I'm just a quiet simple person with a very quiet simple life living one day at a time..

European Union

Posted 28 February 2013 - 09:06 AM

From what we can tell, the FF version 18 has a rendering problem that does not appear in older or more recent Firefox versions.

What you report from the last message is an attempt of moving the publicity bar inside the blue bar and this way keep the header smaller. Unfortunately it is getting difficult to combine these two blocks together.

I've reverted the changes and placed the theme as optional for now. Will later be working to get all the reported issues corrected.

As for the skin, i liked the old one better

But i dont mind the new one ether, its clean and colorful

Maby you Should put it to a Poll

Polls on color decisions would just create havoc around here. Some would criticize actively whatever changes, while a silent majority would enjoy the changes but say no words about the matter. Every now and then we do a refresh on our design, the previous theme will still be available just like the default theme that comes with the board.

Right now the intention is bringing a fresher look to our community. Let's see how this goes.

Interests:I'm just a quiet simple person with a very quiet simple life living one day at a time..

European Union

Posted 01 March 2013 - 07:34 PM

Thanks for reporting. Sometimes it might help to clean up the cache because the CSS and theme files change, so it might be worth to check if from a clean cache the problem persists (just mentioning this in case other folks also stumble in problems).

This afternoon I was making some changes but not everything is over. Still some glitches missing to handle.

Also, I can't find a "new unread topics" link anywhere, does it not exist anymore?

This might be the case, I don't use it so I didn't noticed it was missing. Where was it positioned before?

EDIT: also, I am expert now and no longer Advanced User!

Yes, from my perspective the previous situation with advanced members didn't seem very fair to describe the participation of some members in the community so a new category was created this week (didn't announced this change thought). btw: Congratulations!

Yes, from my perspective the previous situation with advanced members didn't seem very fair to describe the participation of some members in the community so a new category was created this week (didn't announced this change thought). btw: Congratulations!

EDIT: I found it by accident. On the upper right on the index, in that orange rectangle under my large username, there are 4 things. Its the one that sort of looks like a folder. But the URL is slightly different and either that or the one I posted here works the same.

I can apply some changes on my own, but they are far better skilled than me to solve some of these issues that have been reported. Over there you can read about what is being done and add some feedback if you wish. This is the best time to add missing features or corrections.

The left-right margins are way too big. The user profile picture is way too big. Title heading font sizes are a bit too big and have too much whitespace around them. It seems to me that this forum has become for people with bad eyesight who don't like reading meaty technical content but rather want a "pretty" experience.. The theme is wasting a ton of screen real estate in places causing me to have to scroll around a lot more to read and find the content I want. This is not ideal for a technical content site. I should not have to scroll around so much and whitespace should be at a minimum - technical sites should be "content packed".

How many posts are you able to see with your eyes at one time? The goal of a theme should be to maximize this while still maintaining aesthetics and organization.

Interests:I'm just a quiet simple person with a very quiet simple life living one day at a time..

European Union

Posted 10 April 2013 - 11:34 AM

Hi Robert,

Good suggestions but I'm unable to implement them. Would you have designer skills to make changes yourself?

If so, let me know and you are welcome to give a try. Besides "pretty", the goal is to reduce the number of graphics required to load and replace with plain text where possible. This was done for the buttons. Whitespace is a bother, I tried myself to get it smaller but when changing something that elsewhere the design is broken.

What this theme does bring in advantage is the fact that it is more "finger-friendly", meaning that from a tablet device it becomes easier to browser around the topic and read what is being discussed. The previous themes are indeed too small for non-mouse based navigation.

Good suggestions but I'm unable to implement them. Would you have designer skills to make changes yourself?

If so, let me know and you are welcome to give a try. Besides "pretty", the goal is to reduce the number of graphics required to load and replace with plain text where possible. This was done for the buttons. Whitespace is a bother, I tried myself to get it smaller but when changing something that elsewhere the design is broken.

What this theme does bring in advantage is the fact that it is more "finger-friendly", meaning that from a tablet device it becomes easier to browser around the topic and read what is being discussed. The previous themes are indeed too small for non-mouse based navigation.

I like the IP.Board Theme and changed it for me from the button at the bottom. It is full width, doesn't waste space, and is familiar to the many other IP Board websites that users might have already used on other forums, thus consistency. I think it should stay as default. No need for a redesign. Editing CSS files and making something work across all the browsers is a VERY time-consuming task - if IP.Board has already supplied the theme then let it be, its not worth the time.

With that, I assume the vast majority of the users on this board are using this site with mouse and keyboard based devices. It is a technical content site - whenever doing any typing, the user always wants to use a physical keyboard.

For the tiny minority of users who might be using touch-devices to access the site - they can change the theme to Metro for themselves.

Just one suggestion - reduce the Avatar / Profile Picture size. Every other IP Board has it much smaller, example of size it should be.

Interests:I'm just a quiet simple person with a very quiet simple life living one day at a time..

European Union

Posted 11 April 2013 - 08:38 AM

The opinion as end-user is important, however you should also note that "familiar" looks are not necessarily a good thing from a webmaster perspective.

One finds more often an IPB forum site with a customized theme than the other way around, not likely for the sake of the visitors but more for the sake of preserving a digital identity that visually distinguishes a site from the rest.

Usability is always an issue. Resources available to improve this situation are always an issue as well. If there are volunteers willing to invest in making changes, they are welcome.

One finds more often an IPB forum site with a customized theme than the other way around, not likely for the sake of the visitors but more for the sake of preserving a digital identity that visually distinguishes a site from the rest.

And in order to do so, you are attempting to use a Metro like style, i.e. the most senselessly replicated one, that besides the original being wrong, ugly and hurting the eyes, will guarantee a site look very similar to tens or hundreds of other ones.

And when I'm member in several forums, I do not wont on every visit have the same "login trauma": OOPS, here I'm in XYZ. It remands a user behaviour different from my usual one, and the "key buttons" are in a different place and have a different caption.

I would be very happy when I in all forums where I'm member, I could see my preferential "911CD" look. And whenever the forum allows, I try to define for me.

The appearence triggered achievement "HURRAAAHHH, here is my favoured forum" I can miss.

Nuno,
you are failing to see the point (or I completely failed to make it clear ).

The final users (with all due exceptions of course) tend to be like Peter or myself and to like having the same "interface" on the Forums where they go, with *some* shorcuts at the top, *some* at the bottom, *some* on the right, *some* on the left.
We have talked n times about the issue that once you take into account readability, a very restricted number of "ink" and background colours (and fonts) provide better readability.

If you want to distinguish Reboot.pro from the other boards (and as long as you will kindly leave the possibility for old dinosaurs to use the "classic" 911CD kind of skin) you have all my support (and most probably also Peter's one)

What I suggested was that to make something distinctive it must be different from the rest, possibly better, in any case "new" (in the sense of "original").

By replicating the MetroNCI "visual style" you are failing certainly to provide anything "new", and IMHO also not "better".

While my opinion on the awkwardness of NCI "visual style" is obviously irrelevant, it is a fact that it is not "new", and additionally, given the nature of the NCI you have (again IMHO) the added "risk" to have the board confused with OS tiles, apps or whatever pertaining instead to the "local machine".

Finally if you have a look at the ads, very often they are already in that same "visual style", so that will add further confusion.

Interests:I'm just a quiet simple person with a very quiet simple life living one day at a time..

European Union

Posted 11 April 2013 - 08:19 PM

My friends, I know we will never reach a consensus on theme discussions..

From my perspective we need a fresh breeze of air and I'm trying to provide a theme that is as simple as possible, with no fancy graphics nor stuff that take ages to load on the browser.

For me, if a completely text based theme would be possible, I'd jump right in to adopt it around here but there seems to exist no such theme and the default theme is just too default, would welcome some character in the looks please..